One of Canada’s most well known photographers, Edward Burtynsky, has travelled the world documenting the link between nature and industry through his large-format photos of nature transformed through industry; the ‘manufactured landscapes’ of mines, dams, and factories.more...

At the end of May, I went to give a talk at the Hay-on-Wye literary festival. John Bird, of The Big Issue, and I, sang songs to my ukulele accompaniment and enthused about the pleasures of thrift.more...

What do you get if you cross a shoe with a coconut? A bounty for the feet. Laura Sevier meets Sven Segal, eco shoe designer and founder of the Po-Zu range, who has found a novel use for waste coconut husks. . . more...

No one believed Big Tobacco could ever be snuffed out - until health warning stickers were made law. If the same principle of science, information and activism were applied to the aviation industry, argues Mark Anslow, the air we breathe could get cleaner yetmore...

Economist Herman E Daly argues that our future depends on a new economic model, one that needs to be defined by the dynamic balance – the steady state – of the natural world upon which it depends.more...

The corporate market has become the institutional equivalent of a compulsive eater. It has a built-in hunger that cannot be filled, and it is hard to stop the damage within the framework of its own game.
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Sometimes it’s good to take a peep at what the enemy is up to. I spent last weekend reading the New York Herald Tribune, and I’ll sometimes look at The Economist. Both these publications are excellent in their way – the Tribune is far superior in writing and information to The Times, for example – but essentially feed the greed of a business-minded readership anxious to figure out what is going on in the world, the better to profit from it.more...

What does quality of life mean to you? Is it the stuff you buy, keeping up with the Joneses? Or is fresh, clean air, the company you keep, and a less stressful living environment more important?more...

I’ve just been shopping. I went to London, walked into shops and bought things. New things. Not many – in fact my little pile of shopping bags is tragically small. I rapidly got bored and tired, and came back home.more...

‘I’ve been to a fair number this – this is a fantastic place to be based,’ says the Soil Association’s Lee Holdstock, fresh from a trip to the remote south west corner of the Isle of Mull in the Inner Hebrides.more...